Wild Like the Wind by Kristen Ashley
Tack too.
Rush (Tack’s son, who got the best of his dad and the only good she had to give of the bitch of his mom, her light-blue eyes), Shy, Joker and Snapper could all be in magazines. Biker magazines, but those boys had looks.
He could see women not thinking High was hard to look at either.
Dog, who was now in Grand Junction with Brick, Arlo, Bat and Tug setting up their new store there, was the same. And Brick had that teddy bear thing going on that not only made women fall at his feet, it made them think they could treat him like shit and he’d eat it (and he did, until he was done doing that).
Pete was an old guy, not past it but he’d rode hard, lived hard, played hard, fought hard and that was not lost on anyone who looked at him.
Boz, Roscoe, Tug, Bat, Arlo and Speck, they all had biker cool but they had to rely on that. Though Hound didn’t think they thought on it too much. They just caroused and hit the snatch that opened for them, which for Chaos was always abundant.
He’d never thought on it either. But if someone made him do it, seeing as this was the first time ever he’d taken himself in in a mirror when he wasn’t doing it to examine a wound or shave, he would have thought that was it. He was a biker. He was Chaos. He knew how to use his dick. So snatch opened.
Definitely he’d heard he was hot, handsome, good-looking, but he thought that was just bullshit to make him hit something, that something being the pussy of a biker groupie.
Keely calling him “so fucking hot” made him stare hard.
He didn’t see it.
Then again, he had no interest in dick, except his own, and these days he didn’t have to jack it himself, far from it. Any time away from Keely was recuperation time, so he wouldn’t.
And it didn’t matter.
She did see it.
That mattered.
Definitely too much, seeing as he was standing in his bathroom looking at his damned self in the mirror.
He stopped doing that, flipped the light switch and tugged off his boots, socks and jeans.
Then he hit the hay to get five hours of sleep before he had to go see to Jean.
Brookies
Hound lay on the covers in bed next to Jean, his back up her headboard, legs stretched out, stocking feet crossed at the ankles, watching her TV with her under the covers, slouched into him, her head on his shoulder.
Keely would be there in half an hour.
But he would be with Jean if she wanted him for that half an hour.
“I know she’s coming to see you.”
Hound looked from the TV to the top of Jean’s wispy, white-haired head.
“Darlin’,” he murmured.
She lifted her head from his shoulder, twisted her neck and looked up at him.
“You know, sweetheart, after I lost Haim, I couldn’t find it in me to look anywhere else. But that doesn’t mean I didn’t think in the back of my head, ‘maybe tomorrow,’ or ‘maybe next week,’ or ‘I’ll just give it to the end of the year and then I’ll open my heart again.’ Well, days turned into weeks and weeks turned into months and months turned into years, and now I’m here with you. I’m lucky because you’re all I need, and that’s because you’re the kind of man whose heart is generous so I have all I need. And I’m glad I’ll have you in the end. But I still spend a lot of time looking back wondering what if and feeling regret.”
“I hate that for you, Jean bug,” he replied, and he did.
He hated worse her saying the words, “in the end.”
And if Keely ever did that, looked back and asked what if, he’d hate that for her too.
“You lost your heart to this woman years ago, does she know that?” Jean asked.
“I don’t know if she knows how deep it goes, but I know she knows I’m hers.”
“Take backsies.”
His brows drew together. “Say again.”
“You’re hers, take yourself back. Take backsies.”
He grinned at her and shared, “Not sure it works that way.”
That was when she said, “Bill Withers.”
Hound took her in hoping like fuck she wasn’t losing it. Her body was letting her down. Her heart was weak, the doctors worried about it (and Hound worried about it more). Her lungs weren’t great either. Her strength was in the shitter, seemed she slowed down more and more every time he came to her. But her brain was as sharp now as it had been the day he met her nine years ago.
“Jean, darlin’, think you need to explain,” he prompted.
“You young people, I know, can get hold of music real easy these days. So get one of your gadgets and listen to the song ‘Use Me.’ And I think . . . I think,” she bit her lip before she finished, her voice getting quiet, “I think you might like it like that, and okay if you do. But don’t let her use you up.”
Hound felt the warmth hit his gut that she cared about him so much to worry about him that much and knew it was in the small smile he gave her.
“Don’t worry about me, Jean bug,” he whispered.
“Impossible, Shepherd. But I’ll try.”
He leaned in and kissed her forehead.
When he pulled back, she turned to face the TV and dropped her head to his shoulder again.
He dropped his head to hers when she did.
They watched some TV.
She was snoozing when he left her.
And he wasn’t in his pad for five minutes before he got the text from Keely that she was downstairs in her car with chicken.
“Today has just been insane,” Keely declared, walking to the bar of his kitchen, dumping some fancy-ass grocery bags that Hound reckoned rich women who gave a shit about global warming took to LeLane’s gourmet store when they bought groceries, but they still kicked ass because they were Keely’s.
She shrugged off her suede jacket, unwound the long scarf from her throat, sent them and her purse flying toward his beat-up armchair, and suddenly Hound felt a need he’d never felt in his life.
To go furniture shopping.
She started digging in the bags, stating, “I’ve got this kid, who’s just a little shit. Now, I volunteered at King’s Shelter for three years, did an internship there when I was in school, had two boys of my own and it isn’t like I started my job a month ago, so I know kids can be shits. But most of them are just finding their way or have some reason that’s making them be total pains in everyone’s ass or seriously, hormones make you do whacky things. But this kid . . . no. His parents are rich. They’re still together. They spoil his punk ass rotten but neither of them are pushovers. They’re always at school events. All over coming in to chat with me when he skips. They care. And he’s still a punk ass. Skips school at least once a week. I’ve had so many meetings with his parents this year, I’m about to put them in my will.”
Hound wanted to laugh.
He didn’t laugh.
Because she was unearthing shit from those bags that was not grocery-store-bought chicken.
It was Tupperware and stuff folded up in foil.
“Babe, what’s that shit?” he asked.
She turned to him with one hand holding what looked like a glass container filled with brownies.
“What?”
“What did you bring to eat?”
“Keely’s Buttermilk Goodness Chicken Tenders, my potato salad, homemade biscuits, I brought butter, honey and apple butter because I’m guessing you have none of that, but I’m hoping you have water and a pot because I need to blanch the green beans. And we’re having my brookies for dessert.”
“Brookies?”
“Brownies with cookie dough cooked in them.”
Her potato salad was enough.
The rest . . .
“You said you’d bring chicken,” he reminded her.
“Well, I should have said I’m bringing my Keely’s Buttermilk Goodness Chicken Tenders but it’s a mouthful and bottom line, it’s still chicken.”
“In other words, babe, you cooked.”
At this juncture, Hound was seeing the error of his ways.
She wanted his cock up her ass, he should have brought the lube from the Compound, refused the chicken and given her his cum whatever way she wanted to take it.
What he should not have done was opened himself up to Keely’s Buttermilk Goodness Chicken Tenders (something he’d say out loud only if a gun was pointed to his head), the return of her potato salad, the goodness of whatever the fuck brookies were—but with what was in them they couldn’t be anything but great—and her bitching about her work, which he wanted to hear so bad he might need to do something he would never in his life admit he needed to do.
Find a shrink.
“Pan, Hound,” she ordered, back to organizing food. “Water, on the stove. The rest is still hot. It won’t take long to deal with the green beans and then we can eat.”
He needed to draw this line. They didn’t have this. They fucked. They might cuddle and chat between fucks, but that’s what they had.
Not this.
Hound drew no line.
He went and filled a pot with water, and not only did he do that shit, he got out two plates and some cutlery.
“So, I think I need to read my employment contract, but my guess is, they don’t spell it out in the contract that you can’t slap a kid upside the head . . . repeatedly . . . for being a punk ass. Still, I think they’d frown on that. Now I’m at a loss, because I honestly just want to write him off and let the principal suspend him and let his parents take him in hand and not let him waste more of my time, but that will fuck with my perfect average of keeping kids in school or at least getting them back there and making them stay, which I’ve worked my ass off to do for six and a half years.”
Hound had the water going under the pan and was facing her over the bar.
“You have a perfect record of keeping kids in school?” he asked, surprised.
“It’s not my job not to let them smoke pot, meth, crack or inject heroin on school grounds. Or not to stick each other during fights. Or make them stop fucking each other in the bathrooms or fingering each other at assemblies. It’s my job to bring them back so they can do all that on school property.”
Hound stared at her a beat then threw his head back and busted out laughing.
When he righted his head, she was smiling at him in a way he was way too amused to let penetrate.
“Baby, not sure you take your job serious enough,” he told her.
“I have enough to handle with what I’ve got and that’s more serious than is cool. There are a lot of parents who do not give a fuck about their kids, Hound, not even a little bit. They care about their cars or their designer shoes and handbags. So many of them are Jeremy. So many, it isn’t even funny.”
“Jeremy?” he asked.
“Pearl Jam. ‘Jeremy,’” she answered. “Kids are not something Mom can wear. So they don’t give a fuck. They go shopping. The kids come home to an empty house but their bed is covered in shopping bags. They’ve got great clothes, the latest phone, hot wheels, and no love. But by the time they get to high school, Jeremy is not gonna be talking in class. That hurt is gonna have burned so down deep, no social worker attendance officer is gonna be able to heal it.”
“Baby,” he whispered.
She was needlessly arranging food on his counter she wasn’t going to open until the beans were ready and studying herself doing it.
This should have been a clue.
Hound was tuned to her, very tuned, and still, he did not field that clue.
And he’d wish he did.
“My boys thought it was a pain in the ass that we sat down to dinner every night. Every night. This was even before I heard this stuff from the kids, learned about it in school. I just know the way my folks were and the way . . . the way,” she lifted her eyes to him, “Graham came from money, but not the good kind, the up-its-own-ass kind. He didn’t fit and they treated him like shit.”
“I know,” he said when she stopped speaking, watching her closely now that she’d brought Black right out there, right there, between them.
“So we talked about it, him and me. And unless Club shit got in the way, we were going to have family dinner every night. Even if we got McDonald’s. We’d sit down and look in each other’s eyes and talk and ask about our days and let them know we gave a shit. I let them know I gave a shit. You know that. You’ve sat down to dinner with us.”
He nodded.
He had.
Not often.
But he had.
“It’s really that easy,” she continued. “I swear to God. I gave my boys a lot. Chaos gave my boys a lot. But I swear, the most important thing I gave them was my time every day during dinner.”
“You’re probably right, baby,” he agreed.
“And you.”
Hound’s chest caved in on itself.
This was such an extreme sensation he had to push out his, “What?”
“The only other thing I gave them that was important was not cutting them off from Chaos, which meant not cutting them off from you.”
Christ.
Christ.
“Keely—”
She shook her head, lifted her hand palm out his way and interrupted him.
“It’s about time I said it and it requires no response. I know you did it for me, for them, for Graham, and you didn’t even think about it. It’s in your blood. It’s in all you all’s blood. But yours especially. I know, Hound. It’s just what you do. But I’ll never forget you standing in my backyard covered in blood, and what that meant you did for me, for us, for Black. I know with every lawn you mowed and every time you took the boys for burgers and every time I’d see you close to one of them, your head bent to them, and I knew you were delivering a man lesson I’d have no hope to give, but they soaked up like a sponge, how important what you gave them was. They love you down deep to their souls, and I’m grateful to you down deep to mine and it’s about time I said it.”
He just stood there staring at her over his countertop that had not, in nine years, ever had that amount of food on it and not ever had food that good on it, and he knew that shit before he’d even tasted it, and he said not a damned thing.
Not only because what she said meant so much he couldn’t speak.
Because what she said meant so much, there were no words to say.
“This is not about that,” she said low, her voice rippling over him like a soft touch. “What we got right now. What we have in your bed. Why I come to you every night. That’s about you and me. Please never ever, please, please, baby, never ever mistake what this is between you and me. And it’s not about that.”
He had no idea what it was so he couldn’t mistake it.
But she didn’t want him to think it was gratitude, so he could give her that.
“I won’t mistake it, Keely.”
“Now, the look on your face makes me want to suck your cock but I’m hungry since you made me wait forever to eat, so we’re gonna do that first and then we’ll get down to the good stuff.”
“I have a feeling, your potato salad, babe, the good stuff starts earlier.”
She smiled, it was smaller than usual and a little unsure, a little uneasy, and he worried after that, but she still did it.
“I remember you liked that,” she said. “But you’ll fall in love with my chicken.”
Hound had no doubt.
He had no fucking doubt at all.
And he’d find he was right.
Hound made it so she could take him.
With him ass to his calves, her straddling with her back to his chest, sitting on his cock, her hole primed with his fingers and lube and so much foreplay, they had to have broken a record, his dick slathered in lube too, she took him up her own ass, doing it slow.
It was agony.
She was hot and tight up there.
&n
Unbelievably tight.
He was working her tit with the fingers of one hand, her clit with the other and having not a small amount of trouble not taking over.
“God, this is . . . it’s . . .” she breathed then inched down on him farther. “Nice.”
He shoved his face in her neck and tried to think of things that didn’t include wrapping his arm around her hips to hold her steady and driving his cock up her ass.
“You okay?” she asked.
He was not.
“Totally,” he answered.
She took more of him.
He growled into her neck.
“Okay?” she asked.
“Baby, it’s you gotta be okay,” he told her.
She slid down farther, pushing out a breathy, “I’m okay.”
“Then it’s okay,” he grunted.
“Can I . . . are you good with . . . more?” she asked.
He wanted to shout it.
Instead he gritted it through his teeth.
“Yeah.”
She slid down farther, feeling it, taking more and then he felt her ass hit his thighs.
And he was in.
“Fuck,” he groaned.
“Good?” she asked.
“Babe, my cock is buried in hot tight. I don’t wanna hurry you but—”
“Fuck it,” she whispered.
“What?”
“Take it, baby.”
“Keely—”
She twisted her neck, he lifted up and she looked him in the eye.
“Fuck my ass, Hound.”
He went in, taking her mouth, clamped on her tit, kept at her clit and moved, bouncing her up, gliding out, pulling her down.
He went slow. He went gentle. He loved every fucking stroke. She got off on it too. He kissed her through it all.
And when she came, she sank her teeth in his lip so hard, he tasted blood.
Then when he came, he ground his cock up her ass so deep and shot so huge, he was worried he’d never quit coming.
When he did, her forehead was in his throat so he rested his jaw on the side of her head.
“Fuck, that was fucking awesome,” she said into his skin.